In the early years of my schooling at a Catholic elementary school, I learned about Grace.
It was one of the most interesting and difficult to grasp concepts I remember learning.
I think if you asked each of the forty of us in that class what we took GRACE to mean, you would get forty different answers.
This is what I remember from those lessons: Grace is something that you want to collect - that you will bring with you from this world to the next. It is something only God can grant. Grace is not something you can buy or sell. [I guess I learned at a much later date about the buying of indulgences, note, this is quite different from Grace.]
There were ways that you could EARN Grace. I understood from what the teacher told us that Grace was earned by doing things selflessly; that you would never know when the Grace was granted, rather the heavenly tally was something God and St. Peter would know when you met them after death.
I am not sure that I was moved to try to earn Grace by that lesson. It seemed like one of those things that was so out of your control that you shouldn't worry about it. Besides how would you know if you had reached the correct level of selflessness? Wouldn't that just invalidate the action if you were worrying about whether or not your act was selfless.
By the way, I was probably seven when I was trying to assimilate this concept into my life.
I equated the concept of Grace with my dad who would literally give the shirt off his back if you needed it, even if you didn't ask for it. My dad never appears to stop and consider whether or not he should give. He certainly doesn't seem to worry about whether or not the act of giving is selfless.
In my mind, this meant that Grace was another one of those amorphous rules, like the Golden Rule, that you strove to achieve, but that was not something you could reach and then coast through. Rather it was like a heavenly measuring stick you needed to keep trying to reach. I don't remember fretting about it at all.
I had a classmate, though, who clearly spent much more time considering how to achieve Grace. Let's call her Melanie. I discovered Melanie's Grace quest by accident.
Our school, like many Catholic elementary schools, was on the grounds of a Catholic Church. We walked by it everyday. We played in its shadow at lunch and recess as its parking lot became our playground during school hours.
At this Catholic Church, like many others in the country, there is a morning mass every day. It starts at 8am and runs roughly thirty minutes. Though my dad's regular schedule when I was in school had him leaving the house by 7:30am, during Lent, I would often walk past the church parking lot in the morning and see his work truck, painted bright orange, parked there.
It turns out during Lent, my dad liked to go to morning mass every day. It is now his daily practice in retirement to go to mass every day. I started leaving for school as early as I could, and this was extremely challenging for me as I was almost always late for school. I wanted to spend a little more time with my dad, so my reasons for trying to make it to morning mass were anything but selfless.
I noticed, on those mornings that I arrived in time for mass, that Melanie was there. As I got one last hug from my dad [who we have to say is lovely and wonderful in so many ways, does not really do well will showing physical affection], I noted that Melanie was sitting in a pew outside the confessional.
It turns out during Lent you can also go to confession right after morning mass. Maybe not everyday, maybe only one day a week. I can't exactly remember. But on those days, I started to notice that Melanie would be late for school, but she never got in trouble. Being inquisitive and not employing filters, one day at lunch I asked Melanie about it.
Melanie was one of four classmates who came from an inordinately large family. The "large" families ranged from 8 to 12 children. And Melanie was number 10 of 12 in her family. Her mother prescribed to the healthy, earthy-crunchy lunches way before it was fashionable. So, there was Melanie with her perhaps homemade whole grain bread, thickly sliced, with peanut butter and jelly. I asked innocently why she was coming late to class sometimes.
She answered briefly, "I went to confession after mass." This is why I think it was every day during Lent because my response, probably read in my eyes widening, was astonishment and shock. Pretty sure my follow up question was, "What do you have to confess every day?"
She looked at me innocently and resolutely and said, "I'm collecting Grace."
We clearly had gotten different messages about earning Grace from the same lesson.
What does this have to do with Jamey? Sorry, it's getting long, you'll find out in part 3.
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